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Salt Lake City Olympics Support

Projects

Overview

Objective

The purpose of this modeling effort was to provide the Defense Threat Reduction Agency with wind and other boundary-layer data to be used for transport and dispersion calculations in the event hazardous material was released into the atmosphere during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Description

During the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, NCAR operated an MM5-based mesoscale data-assimilation and forecast system that provided analyses and forecasts of winds on a variety of scales, from the area of the western U.S. down to the urban scale. The meteorological situation was challenging in that the complex orography and the coastline of the Great Salt Lake produced interacting sea-land breezes and mountain-valley breezes. The data-assimilation system and forecast model that were employed were similar to the system developed by RAL for Army test-range support. The grid increment of the inner-most grid was 1.3 km, and was capable of representing the thermal and dynamic effects of the Salt Lake City urban area. A variety of local near-surface data were assimilated by the model.

Funding:

Contacts:

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Primary Contacts

The 4DWX real-time Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation (RTFDDA) and forecast system was engineered to support DTRA mission in 7 by 24 mode. The system generated real-time four-dimensional, dynamically consistent, multi-scale analyses by incorporating all available observations into the full- physics MM5 system. Four nested meshes were employed to provide multi-scale analyses and forecasts, and the finest mesh has a resolution of 1.3 km and covers all Olympic game venues. Data from special stations set for the Olympics support were incorporated into the system along with all other weather report. Fifteen-hour forecasts were produced every 3 hours for all domains. The system had been running successfully throughout the Olympic period between Feb. 6 and Mar. 16, 2002 and the system product availability was over 99% of the time period.

Technology

Real-Time Four Dimensional Data Assimilation (RTFDDA)

The Real-Time Four Dimensional Data Assimilation (RTFDDA) system is a computer-model that was originally developed by NCAR for producing analyses of current meteorological conditions and forecasts for U.S Army test ranges. Since then, the system has been adopted by other DoD and government agencies for support of special missions and for homeland-security applications.

RTFDDA focuses its computational resources on forecasting for specific geographic areas - not the entire continent, for example. This narrow focus enables the model to resolve a greater number of meteorological features while maintaining accuracy. The forecasting system can be deployed worldwide to address threats of a human or man-made nature. For example, RTFDDA has been used for counter-terrorism support for both the Athens and Salt Lake City Olympics and to forecast the movement of hazardous material potentially released into the atmosphere. The system was used by the Army to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and it provided superior forecasts of Hurricane Rita in September 2005. In summary, the system excels at representing the details of the day-to-day weather in urban areas, as well as the extreme weather associated with hurricanes and thunderstorms.

Hardware

NCAR has partnered with three commercial providers of hardware systems for running the models and other 4DWX subsystems:

Aspen Systems: Linux Cluster Technology

Aspen has provided robust and cost-effective Linux clusters in lieu of using the more expensive shared memory platforms, which were originally used to implement 4DWX modeling systems.

Two 64-processor Linux clusters were employed, one was located at Dugway Proving Ground and the other was at NCAR. Two identical RTFDDA systems were running independently on each of the machine, which ensures a high reliability of the model products.

Collaborator

U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC)U.S. Army Developmental Command (DTC) The U.S. Army Developmental Command (DTC) is the developmental testing arm of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) and the Army's premier organization for conducting developmental testing of weapons and equipment. With the largest, most diverse array of testing capabilities in the Department of Defense , DTC tests military hardware of every description under precise conditions across the full spectrum of arctic, tropical, desert and other natural or controlled environments on highly instrumented ranges and test courses